California Democratic Party political adviser Bob Mulholland watched British Prime Minister Tony Blair make his last trip to Washington today with mixed feelings of “joy and sadness.” That’s because Mulholland, the state’s most famous political attack dog, has been consulting with Blair’s Labor Party dating back to 1992 — when Labor insiders came to California to learn first-hand how to do bare-knuckled politics.

Mulholland met Blair for the first time at Westminster Abbey in 1994 at the funeral of Labour Party leader John Smith. “I remember one of the Labor people saying, ‘Wow, Tony is standing there shaking hands with people as they’re leaving the service,'” he said. “That is the New Labor. The Old Labor didn’t do that.”

Blair, at the time, headed a party that had been out of power for 18 years, Mullholand said. And Labor officials told him “the tactics we were using don’t work. And that’s why they took a look at American politics, and particularly California politics — because we were a lot more aggressive than other (parties) in the country.”

Margaret McDonagh, a member of the House of Lords and a Labor general secretary, and Alan Barnard, another Labor insider, visited the United States and closely observed the U.S. Senate races of Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein and the presidential race of Bill Clinton in 1992, Mulholland said.

They “picked up the visibility, aggressive press strategy and rapid response” used by state Democratic operatives, Mulholland said. And Labor insiders immediately noticed one trick used in San Francisco, where “candidates for school board were handing out baseball cards” that listed five simple campaign promises.

That’s how “Labor’s Five Promises,” an enormously effective political tool used by Blair, was born, said Mulholland. In 1997, Labor officials “distributed hundreds of thousands of cards” that trademarked the party’s simple pledges including expanding health care, improving education, and reducing unemployment among youth.

“Every (Labor) candidate would take it out of their pocket (on the campaign trail) — and people have used it ever since,” he said.

With Mulholland’s help, the once-stodgy Labor crowd picked up a few other Golden State tricks, too: “The posters, the masks, the costumes and the ‘Burma Shave’ technique” — a favorite of Mulholland’s in which volunteers along the highways hit motorists with coordinated political messages.

“It was something they’d never done,” he says.

On the morning after Blair’s election on May 2,1997, Mulholland was summoned by Labor officials to 10 Downing Street — the Prime Minister’s official residence — in preparation for the family’s arrival. In a California-style moment, Mulholland went up and down Downing “and gave out over 500 flags.” The sea of Union Jacks were waving as the Blairs — in another unorthodox move — got out of their car and walked slowly up the street waving to the masses.

“There was a huge feeling of joy … they saw the excitement, the enthusiasm and the hope,” Mulholland recalled. “It was a photo which went around the world.”

Today as Blair prepares to step down June 27, polls show that 69 percent of British voters will remember Blair for backing President Bush and getting their country into Iraq, but a whopping 61 percent also characterize him as a good prime minister, Mulholland says.

Whatever his loyalty to George W. Bush on Iraq, Blair — like his counterpart in America, Bill Clinton — “represented the post Cold War thinking and new reality of globalization and massive travel and migration and the high tech development in the world,” Mulholland believes. “They pushed aside old ideas and grabbed new ideas. And historians will remember them well.”